Sleigh Bells: Reign of Terror

Take Cover features interviews with the people behind today's most striking album covers.

All of Sleigh Bells' precise anarchy is present in the red, white, and blue of their Reign of Terror sleeve. You've got the dirtied, bloodied Keds shot in a carefully composed environment, as if they were a museum piece taken from CBGB's heyday. The picture of singer Alexis Krauss' shoes immediately struck guitarist Derek Miller, and it's easy to see why. But what might not be so obvious is the deep personal meanings behind the images included in the Reign of Terror booklet as well as their recent single covers for "Comeback Kid" and "Born to Lose". The sleeves feature pictures of items-- including a shot-through canteen, a folded American flag, and a Purple Heart medallion-- that were handed down to Miller from his grandfather, who fought in WWII and passed away 15 years ago. And, like the music that makes up Reign of Terror, the photos also hint at the suffering Miller went through after his father died in a 2009 motorcycle accident.

The guitarist was in Paris prepping for a show when we chatted with him at the beginning of March, a couple weeks after Sleigh Bells' divisive performance on "Saturday Night Live". Talking about that appearance, which was met with some online criticism, he was blunt. "On television, you have to compromise all your production values and it's impossible to sound good," he said. But the gig wasn't a total wash-- Miller got to meet "SNL" host Maya Rudolph's significant other, filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, and even slip him a personalized mixtape. "That's just my way of saying hi to someone," says Miller. What was on the tape? "Just a bunch of crazy shit I've been listening to: a bunch of Lil B, some Burzum," he says, laughing. "I haven't heard back from him about it yet."

Pitchfork: Those are Alexis' shoes on the cover, right?

Derek Miller: Yes. And some of that blood is real-- I'm not gonna lie, we doctored it up. But I cracked her over the head with my guitar at a show, and we held onto the shoes. If Keds are a symbol of youth and purity, having them tainted can be seen as a loss of innocence; a lot of life has happened to me in a very, very short period of time. And the shoes are a reflection of Alexis as well. She wears Keds every night on stage. It's a ritual. So I feel like we're both present in that cover. Aside from all that, it also just works as a striking, bad-ass image.

Pitchfork:What about the pictures of the American flag and the canteen and the Purple Heart inside the booklet?

DM: It does seem like a random collection of things, but there's a thread tying them all together: They're my grandfather's WWII antiquities that I have sitting around in my apartment in Brooklyn. Both my grandfathers were in WWII, and my grandfather on my dad's side was a paratrooper. He passed when I was 15. The canteen has entrance and exit marks from a bullet-- the bullet actually went into my grandfather's leg, and that's how he got the Purple Heart. There's his folded flag in there as well.

That stuff has just always been there. When I used to go to my grandparents' house, I'd put on all my grandfather's old military gear and walk around, you know, both feet would fit inside one boot. The Purple Heart also had to do with my dad. His passing was very difficult for me and my family, naturally. It was just a really terrible, painful experience and of course a Purple Heart is something you receive after you are wounded in service. I'm not drawing a direct comparison, but the thought occurred to me. And the artwork for the "Comeback Kid" single is actually a sugar cane field; my dad was a sugar cane farmer. Every season, as part of the harvest, they would burn the entire field.

Reign of Terror is mainly about internal conflict and-- this is kind of corny-- I was definitely at war with myself. I have a lot of very self-destructive tendencies, and they were greatly magnified over the past few years. You learn about yourself in situations like that. I'm not sure I necessarily liked everything I learned, but I'm still here. I made it. And the record was my only outlet, because I don't know how to talk about any of those things, and I don't care to.

Pitchfork:Did you ever talk to your grandfather about his war experiences?

DM: We never had any meaningful discussions about it, which I aways regret. But he was a pretty steely dude. I'm not sure he would have had a lot to say about it other than: "War is hell. Men kill each other. That's life." I'd talk to my dad about him, like, "Did pops ever lose sleeping thinking about all this shit he went through?" And my dad was like, "The man slept soundly, he never had a problem with it." Which makes me think he had this understanding that humanity is inherently pretty dark and there is nothing you can do about it.

Pitchfork:Do you feel like you're glorifying war at all with these photos?

DM: It is a little bit exploitative, and I regret that aspect of it because I have zero intentions of doing that. But it's a negative by product of using these images that I'm willing to live with because I like the way they look so much. I'm super into Vietnam imagery, too-- I have watched Platoon like a thousand times. I have a strange affinity for M-16s and antique American flags. And the reason I felt comfortable going through with it is because they are very personal items-- I didn't just dig these things up in someone's garage sale. They mean something to my family, and I am essentially honoring that. Without that narrative it can look a little tasteless, but I am willing to live with that.

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Pitchfork:What about the shot of Alexis jumping up and down on a bed with a gun in the "Comeback Kid" video?

DM: That video was shot in my old house. Alexis was wearing my mom's old red robe and jumping on my mom's old bed. I grew up in that house. And that's my dad's gun, which is now my gun. My dad used to hunt when he was younger, and I actually inherited an arsenal from him, literally: 32 weapons. None of them are in New York, I want to make that very clear! They're all in a closet in Florida. The craziest one is an Uzi that a police officer gave my dad 30 years ago.

Half of those guns were my dad's, and the other half were my grandfather's on my mom's side. I think he was legitimately concerned with total anarchy breaking out, like if there's a nuclear war and you have to hold onto your plot of land. He was pretty out-there. Hell of a guy, a doctor. But he was a little bit paranoid, hence all the guns.

Pitchfork:Did you go to shooting ranges with your dad growing up?

DM: Yes. We used to go to ranges all the time when I was a teenager, but I haven't shot a gun in a while, and I don't want to promote them. Then I'll start getting interview questions about gun control, and it's gonna get political, and I don't even want to go there. [laughs]

Pitchfork:My grandfather was in WWII and my dad was into guns, too-- I wonder if part of that was about proving your masculinity to your father.

DM: Yeah. There probably was a lot of that. I remember burning through a string of nonfiction war stories like Philip Caputo's The Rumor of War and James Bradley's Flags of Our Fathers during the brief period I was at college, when I was 20. They're fascinating. They give you perspective. I remember being a little freaked out about leaving home and going to college, and my problems suddenly seemed very small. I don't know how these guys did it. It's just so fucking sad. I remember this one detail from Flags of Our Fathers-- and this is graphic-- but they said that whenever a man was being bayoneted right next to them or was mortally rounded, they would all ask for their mothers. There's something about that that really disturbed me. It still does.

Pitchfork:Did you every think about joining the army yourself?

DM: Absolutely not. It's interesting, a few guys approached Alexis about the Purple Heart artwork on tour, and they were actually flattered by it. They'd been in Iraq and Afghanistan. That was heartening to me because it's a delicate situation, and I've been pretty heavy-handed with it. I hope people understand that I'm doing it out of respect and a very real attachment to the imagery.